An interesting verdict from The Independent’s Readers’ Editor:

Bloggers. Dontcha hate ’em? You can just imagine them out there – in some grungy internet café, consumed with bile, prejudice and misinformation, drinking from a scummy coffee cup. One thing they won’t be drinking from is any kind of fount of wisdom. And as for the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’, doubt if they’ve ever heard of it. Citizen journalists? Pah! How dare they compare themselves with pukka representatives of the Fourth Estate, with their years of training, unswerving devotion to the truth, total lack of bias, and staunch regard for journalistic codes of ethics?

At least, that’s the view of many mainstream journalists still, despite the fact that the media landscape has changed almost totally in the past two decades. As a readers’ editor who consumes blogs for a living, you’d expect me to take the opposite view – and I do. No longer are blogs merely – as one former editor of ‘The Independent’ once put it – “the din of small voices”. The best of them now rival Fleet Street’s finest. So here are half-a-dozen reasons for all you bloggers to be cheerful…
(Read the full piece here)